[updated:LAST EDITED ON Sep-24-05 AT 02:00 AM (EST)]My kid just up graded to a DW 5000 double pedal and he says its the best investment he's main for drums!
I'm clueless in the drum department so I gotta take his word on it! LOL

Hey, thanks for the info on purchases. I am a huge fan of the Salvation Army. I am a regular. I have furnished my places, clothed me & my daughter, just about everything you can think of. I guess the double pedal is a go then but it's gonna be PDP which is a DW product on the low end. As far as lessons go, I took a harmonica class at an adult school and it just went on from there. At community college a classical guitar class, don't read music but learned some tabs,scales PIMA. Maybe we all learn in different ways. I have seen some people, like my little brother before he died, could play anything it seemed like. Not that he didn't work really hard at it. We had an old piano so us kids all played, I played violin in school when I was young. Learning to read drum music and taking lessons off and on has been good for me. I think it's hard to find a good teacher sometimes and there's the pride thing. I see a lot of guitar players trading info constantly so that's a good way to expand. Right now I have a teacher that I respect and learn so much from and it's really inexpensive for what I'm getting. Especially not being in a band right now. I've gone to drum clinics but got tired of some of the fancy excess, but I did find out that some of the top drummers, rock n roll still will take lessons. So that influenced me. Steve Gadd is coming and I will go see his clinic!
I admire people who play from the heart however they get there is OK with me. I don't want to be put down for taking lessons. If I am lucky I would like to play professionally and want to prepare myself in any way I can. If not I might have more options in the kinds of bands I play in. I also get books from the library to learn guitar and to figure out what you guys are all talking about. Take care.

1four5, Wow just checked out the site. Did you see the silvertone's? The bidding's getting up there. How do you use a site like this? I've only been on the Net like 1 week or so. I can't bid on anything right now but wouldn't mind knowing how this works. I have a Synsonic electric. It was in really good condition until I let this little boy borrow it. It still works, though. Thanks.

It's pretty straight forward, you sign up there just like you did for the forum here. Then you bid on what you want. It will ask for your user name and password when you place the bid. If you win, you can either pay on line with a credit card, or send a check...and they send the goods. You have to be carefull not to get caught up in a bidding war...sometime stuff will go way too high because several people want the same thing. I alway keep telling myself more good stuff will show up. I've bid on 100's of guitars, but have a limit I don't exceed, because I always know more will show up. For every auction I've won, I'll bet I bid on at least 100 I didn't.

Chick, I have a book on Chicago Blues by Mike Rowe and found Elgin Evans as Muddy Waters' drummer and Fred Below with the Four Aces backing Little Walter. They met in drummer's school! Fred was actually a jazz drummer and quit on the first night cause he could'nt play blues. The guys coached him and he got it and kept the jazzy feel. I have some cassettes but our little library up here has a great old blues selection so I'm going over today. I also have some old Chess, Checker and other 78s that a friend gave me. They're a litle scratched and chipped and I've been afraid to play them. There's Muddy's "She Moves Me" & "Early Morning Blues" & Little Walter's "Off The Wall" & "Tell Me Mama" with the Jukes. Anybody have any suggestions on playing these 78s? Thanks.

>I also have some
>old Chess, Checker and other 78s that a friend gave me.
>They're a litle scratched and chipped and I've been afraid
>to play them. There's Muddy's "She Moves Me" & "Early
>Morning Blues" & Little Walter's "Off The Wall" & "Tell Me
>Mama" with the Jukes. Anybody have any suggestions on
>playing these 78s?

HOLY COW!! Seriously? 78s from Chess and Checker? DO NOT play them - those could be serious historical artifacts and collector's items. Get your music from the library etc. and consult an expert on those discs.

I would like to hear what you might want in a drummer to help me hone my practice.

Never loose sight of the fact that the drummer is supposed to and in charge of carrying the beat. IMHO, BLUES drummers should have a snare, bass, high hat and ride. That's it. No toms for rolls, no crashes. It all gets in the way of great blues.

Our drummer, which we are about to replace, just doesn't get it after a year of coaching. We can't get him to "hear" 12 bars! He always rolls and crashes on the 4 and the 8 thinking that is the change, even in the middle of solos. When questioned repeatedly about his motives, his answer is always the same; "I'm just trying to add something to the music." How ironic that what he is adding is actually a distraction.

One of my band's staples is J.J. Cale's "Call Me The Breeze." Lynyrd Skynyrd's live version is on the playlist of the local rock station and I hear it almost every day. Artymis Pyle gives a clinic on keeping the beat and staying out of the way of vocals, three guitars and the piano. What does he do at the change? He hits the snare TWICE instead of ONCE. Absolutely fabulous! I implore every drummer to listen to this recording. And this is the ROCK version of the song, never mind J.J.'s bluesy rendering.

Like our lead guitar player said, "If you get bored keeping the beat, which is your job, then you should have learned to play another instrument."

>This is all compared to the standard drummers who more or less bash >at the drums as if each part of the kit made only one noise and one >noise only.

sorry i forgot about this topic-- yeah jazz drummers usually have a far deeper understanding of rhythm (and how it may flow in and out of a song) than any conventional rock drummer. They treat a drumset as an actual instrument (as they should) opposed to a noise box. Seriously, if I wanted a buncha loud bangs and crashes id record a destuction derby and play it behind every song.

Ideal drummer? 5'3", curvy, holds a good steady beat and has a bottle of red waiting for me. But don't tell the wife.

Seriously, someone that don't speed up, slow down, that backs off when the mood of the piece demands it and just works and wants to work at being the good steady platform the player/s need.

I don't want, when I listen to the blues, to hear a guitar player getting into ego trip solos and that goes for the rest of the band. I just want the tune to work and I think that comes with the balancing of passion and restraint.

I was at a jam session Thursday night that had both sides of the issue covered. It was a real night and day experience. The first drummer played with guitar and bass. The guitar was kind of loud and the bass was working it real hard. The drummer played through every kick the bass player gave him. Strong left handed drummer, but he stayed on a cymbal the whole time. No accents at all. He never played one drop dead rimshot all in the 3 tune set.
The next two drummers both did real well. Played great with jam session horn sections doing things that sounded rehearsed at times.

What the difference? I go along with Johnnie Thomassie's saying about music in general. Johnnie played drums with the likes of Tom Waits, Luther Kent, and many more. He simply stated, "IT AIN'T WHAT YOU PLAY, IT'S WHAT YOU DON'T PLAY." He could do the things that, he needed to do to let everybody in the house know where the beat was. He left the holes in the music to allow the subtle licks of other instruments to be heard or for sound of silence to ring through. And of course he had a great sense of time and meter.

Fred Below, S.P. Leary, Odie Payne, Elgin Evans, and Sam Lay for starters. Chick Webb and Panama Francis are also great for ideas (as are many jazz and big band drummers) and I'd suggest listening to a good handful of guys out there today - Jimi Bott, Richard Innes, Per Hanson, and Steve Mugalian.